The activities that are performed over the web change every day. It’s a highly competitive digital world where businesses are discovered successfully on the verge of using the right and trending technology. Technology today is exceptionally variable as well as constantly uncertain. This is the primary reason why web developers must recognize, analyze, and create modern innovations to achieve long-term outcomes.
Speaking of the innovations, PHP has emerged as the most superior, innovative technology powering up to 80% of the websites on the internet. This popularity of PHP development is the result of its scalability and user-friendliness. What’s even more exciting is to see the language ahead in every trend from the past three decades.
PHP stands out in the competition due to its features and PHP development tools. These tools keep the web developer community engaged with their powerful and robust functionality.
Now, since the web market is flooded with the best PHP development tools and IDE, it can be pretty challenging to choose the most reliable ones for your business website or applications. Therefore, we have assorted some of the significant PHP tools that are feature-rich and can make your project a success.
But before we hop on to the tools, let’s first explore one of the most commonly used programming languages: PHP. Here, we will talk about
- What is PHP?
- What can PHP do in 2021? (PHP trends)
- Life-saving PHP development tools for your business project ( features and uses )
- Most popular projects built using PHP.
What is PHP?
PHP originally stood for Personal Home Page created by Rasmus Lerdorf (Danish Canadian programmer) in 1994. It is a general-purpose scripting language suited explicitly for web development. PHP is now referred to as “Hypertext Preprocessor”.
PHP: The master of Programming languages
Here are few crucial reasons why PHP is remarkable and is the number one choice for web programming.
- PHP is accessible without any charges, i.e. free and open source.
- PHP is backed up by the largest community of developers in the field of web development. Hire experienced PHP developers for building your business website.
- Many web hosting servers support PHP by default which is not the case in other programming languages. This proves that PHP is a cost-effective choice.
- PHP is regularly maintained and updated to keep up with the latest technology trends.
- Since it is a server-side language, it means all you need to do is install PHP on the server. The client computers requesting the resources do not require PHP on their server.
- PHP gets inbuilt support from MySQL. However, you can also use the language with other database management systems such as Oracle, Postgres, ODBC, MS SQL server etc.
- The best part is, PHP is a cross-platform, where you can deploy your application on multiple operating systems such as Mac OS, Windows, Linux etc.
There are over 20 million websites and applications currently serving their users with the help of PHP scripting language.
Things You can do with PHP in 2021
(PHP Development Trends)
Now that we have seen the benefits of using PHP in your project, how about we also catch up with the latest trends followed by PHP.
Today, custom PHP development services have been utilized to create a number of vibrant and powerful websites for enterprises. Let’s see which PHP trend works best for you.
Progressive Web Apps (PWAs)
If you are concerned about providing your customers with the very best of the internet, Progressive web applications are the finest option. They have the ability to offer their users blazing fast native apps like experience and that too within a browser.
Looking at how mobile applications are constantly losing their charm due to the oversaturated market, modern web apps can be ideal in the industry. PWAs have started dominating as one of the best PHP development trends now.
Single Page Applications (SPAs)
Another trend ruling the market these days is Single Page websites and applications. The biggest advantage of using SPAs is speed, which is also the most significant factor users crave. Considering the increasing traffic of mobile users, SPAs can bring many business applications to the rescue.
Headless Development
The term “headless” is related to the software program architecture that operates without a front end. This architecture allows you to boost the underperforming locations of your sites and applications by decoupling the front end from the backend.
Extreme cloud integration
Cloud is undoubtedly one of the most impressive technologies designed so far with high levels of safety and reduced infrastructure cost. The positive cloud techniques have started attracting more PHP developed websites to the infrastructure. As a result, an intense cloud combination is a popular PHP trend to assess.
There are endless things that you can create using PHP and its tools.
So far, we have been talking about the benefits of PHP tools; it is time that we discover the most preferred PHP web development tools by the developers for an effective process.
Life-saving PHP development tools for Your Business Project
1. PHPstrom
PHPstorm has been the most common choice as compared to other development tools. The tool is known for being lightweight, smooth and extremely quick with its functions. This PHP IDE (integrated development environment) is also well versed with other PHP frameworks such as Symfony, Yii, Zend, CakePHP, Laravel, along with several other content management platforms like Magento, Drupal and WordPress.
This PHPstorm environment offers live editing support to major front end technologies like Javascript, CSS, HTML5 etc. Moreover, the tool also supports unit testing, debugging and code refactoring. PHPstorm empowers developers to integrate with various databases, composer, remote deployment, command-line tools, version control systems, rest clients and a lot of other tools.
PHPstorm Features
- Code rearranger
- Native Zen coding support
- Code completion
- Zero configuration debugging
- Supports extension with abundance useful plugins like VimEditor
Specialties of PHPstorm:
- Supports languages like PHP, VisualBasic, Javascript, C++, C and C#
- Supports platforms like Linux, Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X
2. NuSphere PhpED
PhpED is basically a proprietary integrating PHP development tool provided by NuSphere. This PHP environment contains an advanced PHP debugger, profiler, PHP editor, code insight and database client. This function offers developers various tweaks and tools that can make the entire web development process super smooth. With the helping hand of a commercial PHP accelerator known as PHPExpress, PhpEd boosts up the application development.
Therefore, this IDE can be an ideal option to create complex websites and web applications. While offering huge support to PHP 7.1., the tool also supports CSS3, HTML and Javascript. Developers can also improve their code with the help of its refactoring capabilities.
Read More: Master Web App Development With the 12 Most Potent PHP Libraries
PhpED Features :
- Backs up the composite file extension
- Parallel debugging
- Refactoring of PHP code.
- Full integration with PHP unit
- Acceleration of PHP apps with PhpExpress
Specialties of PhpED :
- Supports Languages like CSS, XML, HTML, PHP, Perl, Python and Javascript
- Supports platforms like Web, Windows, Mac, Linux, iPad.
3. Zend Studio
Many enterprises prefer Zend studio due to its optimal speed. Writing and debugging code in the Zend environment is super easy and doesn’t require extra time and effort. The tool supports PHP7, and it debugs PHP scripts by integrating with Zend debugger, X-ray and Xdebug.
This excellent comprehensive PHP IDE includes an exciting set of features and is known to deploy applications on several servers (including servers in the cloud). Developers can even extend Zend studio through Eclipse Plugins.
Zend studio Features
- Faster and smoother performance in the validation
- Docker support
- Support for Eclipse plugins
- Indexing and searching PHP code
- Zend tool and framework integration
Specialties of Zend studio :
- Supports languages like JavaScript, PHP, Visual Basic, C++, C# and C.
- Supports platforms like Linux, Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X
4. Netbeans
Netbeans IDE is a trendy and widely used PHP environment for Php application development. This tool supports multiple languages along with all the rich features. NetBeans was initially utilized for Java development; however, the current version of the tool is faster, lightweight and supportive for PHP development services.
NetBeans backs up large scale web applications with massive support for languages like English, Brazilian, Russian, Japanese, Portuguese and simplified Chinese. The tool is open source and can work with almost every popular framework such as Symfony2, Zend, CakePHP, Smarty, FuelPHP and WordPress CMS.
NetBeans Features :
- Syntax highlighter
- Code folding and formatting
- Try/Catch code completion
- Getter setter generation
- Smart code completion
Specialties of NetBeans
- Supports languages like JavaScript, PHP, HTML5, C and C++
- Supports platforms like Linux, Mac OS, Windows and Solaris
5. Cloud 9
Cloud 9 is a well known open source cloud IDE that offers a development environment to more than hundreds of programming languages including, C, C++ and Javascript. Developers get to start coding immediately since the environment is pre-configured called Workspace. One can also create web applications using features like live preview and browser compatibility testing.
This PHP IDE allows you to take projects from anywhere and gives a flawless experience for executing serverless apps, defining resources and debugging at the remote. You can also share the development environment with your team, pair programs and track real-time inputs.
Cloud 9 features :
- Tabbed file management
- Built-in image editor
- Code reformatting
- Real-time language analysis
- Integrated debugger
Specialties of Cloud 9
- Supports languages like JavaScript, PHP, C++, C and HTML5
- Supports platforms like Mac OS, Windows, Linux and Solaris
6. Aptana Studio:
Aptana Studio is a PHP development tool specifically used in integration with multiple client-side and server-side technologies. CSS3, Ruby on Rails, Ruby, Python and HTML5 are some of these technologies. The tool explicitly supports a command-line interface and debuggers for easy PHP app development. Aptana comes with FTP, SFTP and IDE customization.
Its powerful web development engine includes all the details about the support and range for each element in the web browser.
Aptana Studio Features :
- IDE customization
- Git integration and Built-in terminal
- Set control execution, breakpoints, inspect variables.
- Collaboration with the team via pull and push actions and merge
- Supports latest HTML5 specifications.
Specialties of Aptana studio :
- Supports languages like Ajax, HTML, Ruby on Rails, PHP and Javascript
- Supports platforms like Plugin for Eclipse, Mac OS X, Linux, Windows
7. CodeLobster:
CodeLobster is another one of the most popular PHP development tools from Codelobster software firm. It has immense support for frameworks like Magento, CakePHP, CodeIgniter, Laravel, Symfony, Drupal and Joomla. Moreover, this tool automatically detects the current server setting and configures related code locally.
With the tool’s internal PHP debugger, one can validate the locally as well.
CodeLobster Features :
- SQL merger
- Code validator
- Syntax highlighting
- Functions parameter display
- DOM elements, auto completing of keywords
Specialties of CodeLobster
- Supports languages like JavaScript, PHP, HTML 5 and CSS
- Supports platforms like Fedora, Linux, Ubuntu, Windows, Mac OS, Debian, Mint
8. Sublime Text
Sublime Text is one of the most amazing text editors in the market for PHP developers. It is not precisely an IDE; however, you can make it a suitable editor by installing specific packages/plugins. The tool is preferred for its extraordinary designs and super-rich features. It is currently a leading customizable text editor with a UI toolkit where you can climb across the lines, symbols and words using Key shortcuts.
Sublime Text features :
- Split editing
- Distraction-free mode
- Plugin API
- Better command palette
- Instant project switch
Specialties of Sublime Text
- Supports all popular languages
- Supports platforms like Mac OS, Windows and Linux
Most Popular Projects Built using PHP
Here are the top 5 most popular PHP projects that create history with their efficient performance and user traffic.
Facebook
It is a social network originally developed in PHP. Facebook even created a new PHP derived language called Hack.
Yahoo
Another example of PHP miracle is Yahoo, which is a widely known search engine. This website counts over 7 billion views per month and is the 6th most visited web portal globally.
Wikipedia
This widespread information resource partly uses PHP functionality. Here the flexible nature of PHP is a major asset for Wikipedia.
WordPress
This famous Content management platform powers 25% of the websites on the internet. The system takes total leverage of PHP features to perform all its processing.
Tumblr
It is a social networking platform to share ideas, images and videos. Tumblr is written in PHP and is ranked among the top 100 most visited websites in the world.
Final thoughts
PHP is a well linked and all-inclusive programming language advancing with time. It offers some of the best PHP IDE tools for web development that bring diversity, scalability and convenience to your project. The tools mentioned in the article are already making headlines in the market for all the right reasons. Let us know which tool suited best for your project.
